Sunday March 24, 2002 -
[ 01:13 AM GMT ]
- By Grant Gross -
A judge has denied a request for an injunction that Microsoft is seeking against Lindows.com, the company that's trying to make more Microsoft programs work in Linux. Microsoft alleges that Lindows is violating its Windows trademark, but our own Jack Bryar notes dozens of other cases where Windows or Windows-like names are used in company products.

Looks like Microsoft either has dozens of trademark violation cases to sue over, or much more likely, will be told by a judge that if it wants a trademark, it should come up with words less common than windows, word or office. But don't hold your breath -- when was the last time you saw Microsoft do something truly innovative?

Sen. Fritz Hollings -- who's from South Carolina but gets a sizable chunk of money from Disney and other large copyright holders --finally introduced a version of his Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, now called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. The proposed law would require electronics manufacturers to embed copy-protection controls in all PCs and consumer electronic devices sold in the United States, pretty much squashing any kind of fair use rights the public has on copyrighted works, and further limiting legitimate reverse engineering done by Open Source developers and others.

I'm not sure how much good a few thousand signatures will do against the corporate resources of Disney and the motion picture industry, but there is an anti-SSSCA petition available. The petition had more than 70,000 signatures as of Sunday evening.

Linux at federal trade show

Linux continues to be in the background at the FOSE technology-in-government trade show, but don't blame the efforts of the Northern Virginia LUG. Members were hoping to pass out 1,000 Linux CDs at the three-day event.

The Nasdaq ended last week at 1,851.30, down ever-so-slightly from the 1,868.30 March 15 close. It was the second week in a row the Nasdaq fell. Of our index of 11 Open Source-related stocks, 10 fell, with only MandrakeSoft rising a week after the company asked for more customer support because of a cash crunch.